ABOUT 700 vehicles sold by Asco Motors mayve be affected by the defective airbags, says company chief executive officer Craig Sims.

Mr Sims made the statement at a press conference yesterday that was held to clarify certain issues regarding the Takata airbags recall.

"Within Fiji, for the vehicles Asco have sold and have the data for, we are looking at about 700 vehicles that have been affected," Mr Sims said.

He said of these some of them could have been written off, some of them re-exported to other countries.

"We have started contacting the customers that we know, however some of these have been resold once or twice or three times and that's where we have used Land Transport Authority to try and get details of ownership," he said.

"For us here in Fiji and here at Asco, we've identified the vehicles that we have sold that have this defective airbags and we've contacted those customers. And some of the difficulties we are facing is that some of these vehicles have been sold two or three times and we don't have that information," Mr Sims said.

He said other Toyota vehicles had also been imported to Fiji by other companies and they didn't have data on them and couldn't contact the owners.

Mr Sims said they had been working with LTA, Consumer Council of Fiji and also the Fijian Competition and Consumer Commission to try and get more information on these.

He asked members of the media for help in publicising how to contact their campaign helpdesk.

"I'm asking owners of the listed vehicles (refer SPSE release and website) to immediately contact Asco Motors Customer Care on 3378287 or by email campaignhelpdesk@asco.com.fj to determine if their vehicle is affected.

"The term 'recall' is probably not correct, this is just a 'special service campaign'," he said.

He said it was not a recall as such and they had parts available and it would take only one and a half hours to fix the problem.

Meanwhile, Sanjeet Kumar, Asco's national operations manager, clarified that the defect only occurred during impact in a collision.

"The airbag explodes and pieces of metal fly out and may get into contact with the driver or passenger of the vehicle," he said.